Bay Guardian Archives

Great head here

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> barsandclubs@sfbg.com

“Half of Americans haven’t tried decent beer,” says William Brand, the Oakland Tribune’s resident beer columnist and local brew expert. Back in the sixth grade, Nebraska native Brand was himself weaned on the likes of Budweiser, Hamm’s, and Coors, wan beverages he now refers to as mere “alcohol vehicles” — brewed with rice and corn, cheaply made, and lacking any real taste. “That’s not beer,” he says, “that’s just crap.”
Brand encountered his first crap-free beer during a stint in the Navy, when he was stationed near Washington, DC. Friends took him out to a posh German restaurant and there, he recalls, he ordered a Wurzburger amber “in a very nice pilsner glass.”
“I took one taste,” he says, “and it was amazing. I never tasted anything like it. Until then, everything I ever tasted was awful.”
He soon mail ordered a home-brewing kit from England and began his long journey to respected beer connoisseurship. Since 1989, his Oakland Tribune column, “What’s on Tap,” has been steering beer fanatics toward the finest local suds. We asked him to share some Bay Area brewery history and talk about some of his local favorites.
SFBG You used to brew your own beer. Why did you stop?
BRAND I moved to California in 1970. I had one glass of Anchor Steam and realized I didn’t have to brew any beer. And of course then the whole beer-making revolution happened. It really all started in the Bay Area, with the Portland area right behind it. In the United States, home brewing was made legal in ’78. Brewpubs became legal in California in ’81.
SFBG How has the American microbrew movement evolved since then?
BRAND For a while it was all Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. But that’s all ancient history. Young Americans traveled to Europe, discovered good beer, and started brewing it. Now there’s about 1,300, 1,600 breweries in America. There’s more beer — and more styles of beer — in America than in any other country in the world.
SFBG What distinguishes the Bay Area microbrew scene?
BRAND Well, you can’t really say “the Bay Area.” You have to say “Northern California.” And it’s a toss-up between Northern California and the Pacific Northwest for beer nirvana. In the US it’s becoming like Germany or Belgium, where different people from different regions have their own styles. In the Pacific Northwest they go for dark and strong beers. In Northern California we’re famous for extremely hoppy beers.
Beers are measured in international bitterness units — it’s a scale that beers use. For comparison purposes, Budweiser is 13 IBUs; Stella is 30 IBUs. We have lots of beers that are 100 IBUs or more. It’s a style that’s becoming known as double IPA [India Pale Ale].
SFBG With an eye toward both quality and adventurous weirdness, what are some of your favorite Bay Area beers?
BRAND There’s one called Watermelon Wheat from 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco. It’s a blend of wheat and barley, and they actually put watermelon in it, which really comes through. You’d think it would be ghastly beer, but it’s quite good. Another of my favorites comes from Drake’s Brewing in San Leandro, and it’s called Papa Denogginizer. It’s hugely hops — and somewhere around 11 percent alcohol. Then go to Marin Brewing Company in Larkspur, and the guy there is making barrel-aged beers. With barrel-aged beers, you brew your beer, you ferment your beer, then you put it in a whiskey barrel or a wine barrel. Going over to Magnolia Brewery on Haight Street, the brewer makes a mild beer in a high hop area. And he brews cask ales — real ale — in the English style.
SFBG If you really want to impress, say, a Belgian — which local beers would you introduce them to?
BRAND Actually, the ones that are really interested in what we’re doing in the US are the Belgians. They’re really smart, and they’re watching us, and there are a few Belgian breweries that are making American-style beer. Most of the Belgians that come over here are looking for something strong and hoppy. So I’d try and find them something like Old Yeltsin — brewed by HopTown Brewing Company in Pleasanton — or a barley wine. There’s a bar and grill called Schooner’s in Antioch that makes a barley wine. It’s quite strong — around 10 or 11 percent — and they age it for a year or two or three, and it’s astounding. So I’d go with our own styles. There are also some American breweries that are doing a Belgian style. In the Bay Area one place for that is Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa — they do stunning stuff.
SFBG So you might say that Europeans understand American beer.
BRAND There’s a lot of respect in Europe for American beer makers today. And there’s no animosity at all. The thing about beer is that people are never snobby. People only become beer snobs when they don’t know what they’re talking about — or when they’re talking about crappy beer. SFBG
Want more brew-haha? Contact William Brand at whatsontap@sbcglobal.net.
THE BREWERIES
21st Amendment Brewery www.21st-amendment.com
Drake’s Brewing www.drinkdrakes.com
Marin Brewing Company www.marinbrewing.com
Magnolia Brewery www.magnoliapub.com
HopTown Brewing Company www.hoptownbrewing.com
Schooner’s www.schoonersbrewery.com
Russian River Brewing Company www.russianriverbrewing.com

CLUB REPORT: RIYADH

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Saudi Arabia is hilarious. Liquor is totally banned, clubbing is seriously frowned upon, and the government can kill you for even glancing at someone in a gay way. Last year more than 100 men there were tortured, publicly flogged, and imprisoned for “dancing and behaving like women” at a wedding. I love our Saudi allies!
Still, you can’t stop the party. Earlier this year in Europe I ran into “Ahmed,” a young Saudi gay man who works in the capital, Riyadh. I immediately asked him how he manages to hook up in such a place:
“Contrary to beliefs, Riyadh has a big social scene. It takes place in the hookah bars, where men get together to relax and smoke and talk, and the women are not there, of course. There are gatherings at people’s houses. And Saudis can be very fashionable and dress in a Western way. I myself find the traditional white thobe, or tunic, and thagiya headwear very comfortable. But then I started to go to the gym on my lunch hour, and it took half an hour to get dressed afterward, so I switched to jeans.
“To find other gays, you use your cell phone and Bluetooth technology. You can identify them when you walk into the hookah bar and log on to a certain IP address. If another person is registered at that address, you can see where they are in the room. This has become less common as people catch on, though.”
What about drag queens? “There are drag performances, usually held at houses. And yes, they do sometimes perform in the abaya, the black dress, and the boshiya, or facial veil. They often perform Madonna.”
So, does he have a lot of success meeting other gay men? “I find that many Saudi men are sexy, but many are uptight. Jordanian boys are easier.” (Marke B.)

CLUB REPORT: BANGKOK

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Clubs in Bangkok are always packed with a mixture of Thais and farang, which means honky or honkies, depending on the number of honkies being talked about. Dressed in perfect designer knockoffs, the local people in Thailand almost never look tacky. The tourists, however, almost always do. Pastel polo shirts, sunglasses at night, and hair that only David Hasselhoff can be blamed for is the standard look for Bangkok’s “cool dudes.” Do not go out on the town wearing a Blue Öyster Cult T-shirt — people will actually be afraid of you.
Probably the hippest club in Bangkok right now is Bed (www.bedsupperclub.com), a massive, hangarlike space divided into two rooms. One room is an enormous dance floor with either thumping techno or prancing house played at a deafening volume. The other half of Bed is where it gets its name. Along the walls of this huge room are big fluffy mattresses with big fluffy pillows on top. Everything is spotless white, so please bathe before climbing up on one.
Santika is the other big mainstream spot. Malls are very popular in Bangkok, and Santika is like a huge mall for clubgoers. The ceilings are about 1,000 feet high, and everything’s very well lit. One room has a stage with live bands playing anything from reggae to metal and a throng of local Thais in front, guzzling whiskey and soda and generally going nuts. Another room has a punishing array of strobe lights and specializes in hip-hop, which in Thailand often means Black Eyed Peas, House of Pain, and Gwen Stefani. Fun.
The best underground “all-Thai” club I’ve been to didn’t have a sign, or a name. My friend led me through a darkened hair salon that was closed for the night (the front door was unlocked), into the next room, up some dimly lit stairs, and then into a darkened room. I half expected to find a game of Russian roulette in progress, but instead the room was packed wall-to-wall with people. Seemingly run by teenagers, the place had, like, two whole lights flashing and was playing authentic hip-hop — every single person was dancing. As the night went on, more and more of the kids came up and wanted to shake my hand and welcome me (the conspicuous farang) to Thailand. It was a really entertaining place but, like many of the best things in Bangkok, totally illegal and transitory. It probably closed down the next night and opened up somewhere else. It’s crazy here. (Mike McGuirk)

CLUB REPORT: REYKJAVIK

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Vikings party, hard. That famous take-no-prisoners vigor applies, big time, when it comes to getting down and conquering pints of good ole bjor (beer by local breweries Viking, natch, Egils, Thule, Spegils, and Litli Jon), the low-alckie malt (brown ale), and lagerol (pale ale). Ducking into Reykjavik’s three-floor dance palace NASA (slogan: “EXPECT HANGOVERS!”), I didn’t glimpse too many elfin Icelanders sucking down the native caraway schnapps, brennivin, also known locally as svartidauoi (“black death” — sch-weet). I was served that on the jet over, along with yummy business-class reindeer sashimi. (Svartidauoi is a very necessary chaser when it comes to tourist palate-tester skyrhakari — putrid shark).
Drinks, schminks, the locals were out on the dance floor, booty dancing to Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia of Deep Dish live on the tables. Got to love the native boogie that evening: a condensed, pixieish finger-and-shoulder wiggle that was a smidge early Steve Martin and more than a little high-nerd. High, for reals — my sturdy male traveling companions later reported back from the men’s room, which they described as a “total scene.” A woman apparently waltzed in at one point and set up a pharmacy, surrounded by a crowd that proved Viking blood courses through their veins — according to one fellow traveler, they elbow something fierce.
Though the packed club was bustling, I met with no outta-hand shoving, just friendly offers to dance with groups of fresh-faced men, handsome, slender, and high-cheekboned. This evening, the internationally renowned Icelandic ladies paled in comparison — many appeared a wee bit wenchy. You know what I’m talking about — too much maquillage, too little too-tight clothing, too many servings of rotten shark. Meow! Where’s my kitten tartare? Time to repair to a quieter watering hole, like Asian fusion temple Apotek, mod lounge Oliver, or the chandeliered Rex, where Quentin Tarantino is said to have matched shots with Björk and the Iceland cultural minister.
Forget about live music tonight, although Iceland is chock-an-ice-block with creative musical originals. I followed Tarantino’s lead once again — as well as Bill Clinton’s — and ended the morning at the Baejarins Beztu hot dog stand by the wharf, right next to my deco lodging, Hotel 1919, circa 1919. Mind-cleansing, chill sea air. Warm light emanating from the oldest fast-food joint in Reykjavik (established 1935). The finest dog in town (homemade lamb wieners topped with delish dried onion and rémoulade). No better way to watch the dawn melt into day. (Kimberly Chun)

CLUB REPORT: JOHANNESBURG

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“Jozi has an unlawful attitude that ignites your vice,” says my friend Gennaro, a 25-year-old gay South African native and nightlife fiend. “Whatever your flavor, it can be found somewhere between the sprawling inner-city architecture and the rejuvenated urban oases. The streets are adorned with a mesmeric melting pot of cosmopolitan socialites.”
Yes, he really talks like that. South Africa is still madly integrating after the fall of apartheid, and other friends from Jozi — call it Johannesburg and you’ll be seriously snubbed — have remarked that the clubs, especially the gay clubs, are still pretty segregated and homosexuality remains somewhat taboo (hey, kind of like here!). There’s no shortage of gay and lesbian bars, however, and definitely no shortage of straight and mixed clubs featuring live music and dance performances that go all night.
“Jozi’s mixed cultures all find a home in the nightlife,” Gennaro continues. “House is the sound of urban Jozi, mixed with a layer of African rhythms, jazz, and kwaito,

Meth-y behavior

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Perhaps a good indicator of a social problem’s gravity is the number of documentaries it inspires. This year crystal meth addiction, specifically in gay urban communities, brings us two, Meth (Todd Ahlberg, 2005; Fri/16, 3 p.m., Castro) and Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth (Jay Corcoran, 2006; Sat/17, 1:15 p.m., Victoria). Watching two treatments certainly seems like a good way to get to the truth — what might be downplayed in one can achieve its rightful resonance with reiteration in the other. And the irony of cautionary tales is that because they admonish by example, they’re inherently fun.
Still, the two films, while stylistically dissimilar, are enough in accordance with one another detail-wise that only one ticket need be purchased. Even the ambivalence in the two, where it shows up, is similar. Another commonality is high quality. When the interviewees in either film aren’t perceptive and articulate about their own predicaments, which is rarely, their evasions and delusions are just as revealing.
The one you decide to see may come down to a packaging preference. Meth is a sleek number whose visuals and soundtrack slyly evoke the circuit parties that took meth abuse under their wing and add the appropriate energy to rapturous accounts of nine-hour sex marathons and wholesale exterminations of self-doubts before serving as an effectively creepy counterpoint to descriptions of the drug’s eventual toll. The film relies solely on interviews with users, however, and though they’re surely an important source for information on the subject, it can feel a little claustrophobic with regard to perspective. Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth’s editing will appeal to those who like fewer hospital corners; it also offers more voices, from health care professionals, family, and friends, without skimping on first-hand accounts and without ever sliding into brochure-speak. Either choice is quite an education. (Jason Shamai)

BOB Readers Poll is back!

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We’re still trying to repair whatever damage was done to our site by an apparent attack, but in the meantime, the Best of the Bay Readers Poll is ready to use. You can get to it here

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SFBG.COM still having problems

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As you’ve probably noticed, our site is still down. We’re working on it right now and trying to get it back up and running today. Bear with us; we’ll be back soon.

Swanson beats Russo

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By G.W. Schulz
With all districts reporting, Sandré Swanson has overcome Oakland city attorney John Russo by 7 percentage points in his primary bid for the 16th Assembly District, which Wilma Chan has held since 2000 and is out due to term limits. District 16 otherwise looks to be uncontested in the general election.
Russo served on the Oakland City Council during the 90s before becoming that Oakland’s first elected city attorney after Jerry Brown’s strong-mayor initiative put the office out for a vote. He made a name for himself in part by filing a nuisance action against Caltrans to force the transportation agency to clean up trash and debris along its properties and by taking on “problem liquor stores.”

Wow! Unity!

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By Tim Redmond

Amazing, but not unexpected: Steve Westly joined with Phil Angelides today in L.A. to announce a unified campaign for the fall. Westly, who had blasted Angelides for allegedly dumping waste into Lake Tahoe, called him ” a brilliant man” who is “comitted to environmental values.”
It was a good move for Westly to be gracious, but it’s a little late for that sort of thing: Schwarzenegger is already gathering up all the negative stuff Westly threw at Angelides, and we’ll see it all again in the fall.
The good news is that the voters will have already been exposed to this stuff once (and while it may have supressed turnout a bit, it clearly didn’t damage Angelides fatally). So when the Guv tries to bring it all up again — “Angelides wants to raise your taxes, Angelides got money from developers, Angelides is a dork,” whatever — the public will be sick of it.
Schwarzenegger is still very, very vulnerable, and will be counting on his big bond measure this fall to carry him. Already, he’s talking about how he wants to rebuild California for the future. The advantage Angelides has is that unlike Westly, he can point to some very clear and different policy positions. He’s not Arnold — and right now, that’s a big thing.

Binder’s analysis

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By Steven T. Jones
Pollster David Binder’s day-after election luncheon at SPUR is a tradition of the season and a must-attend for the wonkiest of political wonks. Among his insights:
* In an otherwise lackluster election, the Ma-Reilly Assembly race increased turnout on the more-conservative westside of San Francisco, thus hurting progressive measures like Measures A (which barely lost…probably) and B (which won, but not by as much as Binder and others predicted)
* There are still 40,000-60,000 absentee and provisional ballots to be counted in San Francisco, meaning Measure A (which was losing by a little over 1,000 words) could still flip, although Binder considers it unlikely given that absentee ballots in this race favored the “no” position.
* For its liberal reputation, San Franciscans are still fairly fiscally conservative and resist spending money. But we still support markedly more liberal candidates than the rest of the state.
* It was a good night for Asians and a bad night for wives seeking to replace their politician husbands.
* Democrats might have a hard time this fall keeping control of the statewide offices.

Progressive power in Oakland

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By G.W. Schulz

All of Alameda County’s precincts have now reported, but absentee and provisional ballots are still not counted. The Alameda County Registrar of Voters couldn’t confirm for us how many such ballots remained.

So we won’t know for a week or two whether or not there will be a runoff between former congressman Ron Dellums and Oakland city council president Ignacio De la Fuente for the mayor’s office. But the race hardly feels tight at this point. Nancy Nadel’s 13 percentage points would likely go to Dellums in the event of a runoff, and Dellums remains 17 points beyond De La Fuente with all precincts reporting.

Mayor Jerry Brown, who’s now on his way to a November election battle with unrivaled Republican primary winner Chuck Poochigian for the state attorney general’s office, rarely shied away from corporate developers in Oakland. Entire neighborhoods have been transformed in just a few years with swanky artist loft spaces and corporate box stores sprouting up everywhere.

De La Fuente was viewed as the candidate who would continue that trend. Dellums offers a very different vision.

Partying for Laguna Honda

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By G.W. Schulz
Perhaps the most obscure and complex of the four local measures that appeared on Tuesday’s ballot was Proposition D, a land-use initiative designed to prevent San Francisco County health officials from allowing the spill-over of patients diagnosed with psychiatric or behavior problems from Potrero Hill’s San Francisco General Hospital to Laguna Honda Hospital in the western section of the city. Prop. D’s opponents defeated the measure by around 45,000 votes. Curiously, however, of all Tuesday’s races, the No on Prop. D election party seemed to be the most star-studded.

A take on A

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By Steven T. Jones
The biggest heartbreak on election day — Measure A being defeated by just over 1,000 votes — should become the biggest opportunity for progressives now that this election is done. This measure was an effort to get needed funds into social programs that would deter street violence and, equally important, to get the communities of color and street-level activists most affected by this problem involved in finding solutions. Blame for this measure’s defeat falls squarely on Mayor Gavin Newsom, his four supporters on the Board of Supervisors (plus Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who was on the wrong side of this one), and the Police Officers Association (and to an unknown degree, whoever attacked and crashed the Guardian site yesterday and kept our endorsements unavailable for much of the day). It’s understandable why the POA wants to pursue only a top-down, more-cops approach to the high murder rate. But what’s unfathomable to me is why Newsom and his political allies continue to do nothing to reform a Police Department that is dysfunctional, arrogant, and understandably doesn’t have the confidence the parts of the community with which it should be working most closely.

Tea – totaled

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Gurl, I woke up on the wrong side of Tuesday afternoon. I don’t know if it was that pint of Cuervo I ordered for appetizers the night before or that quart of quinine I downed soon after for the tetanus I got from sitting on someone’s iPod, but I was hella hungover. My jaw was swiveling, my heart was pounding, and my languid extremities felt so hot that the unicorns on my nails nearly melted. One minute I was hosting the World Cup in my fantasy bra and panties, the next I was hosting it in my actual head.

“This is it,” I thought through the shuddering echo of tiny cleats. “Mama’s gettin’ middle-aged.” I’d finally hit one of midlife’s big Hs: hot flash, hair loss, hangover. And I’m only 19! Good thing I carry some Remifemin and an extra wig in my beaded Whole Foods evening bag.

Fitfully I scanned the Dumpster for any half-smoked butts and chased my scattered thoughts to their grim conclusions. Folks think I’m frickin’ Carrie Bradshaw, being a columnist, lolling around in my Blahniks, whimsically riffing on the romantic wiles of my telegenic brunchmates, leaping with a shy giggle into the magical dilemmas of contemporary life. But this is clubland, Samantha: Dive too deep down in it and — hey, presto! — abracadrinkingproblem. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little party-party, y’all, but us clubbers gotta watch for that border cross over the Rio Messy: Shit’s about as tasteful as soyr cream on a tofurkey burritofu, but with almost twice the calories.

So, maybe it was time for a tiny hooch holiday. Me, I’m an uncurbed child of the streets, where “time-out” is code for “free clinic” (and “free clinic” means “trick’s bathroom”), but in my new semi–fully employed state I’m always running into vibrant-looking Guardian people taking “a personal time-out” — from drinking, from smoking, from imported prickle-backed Peruvian shellfish, whatever. You’d think my health insurance here would cover hangovers, what with the professional risk involved in my line of work, but alas, “no dice.”

“You can do this,” I assured myself. “Just for a week. It’s not like when the government made you give up Wal-Trim diet pills. That was forever.“

But just because I wasn’t drinking didn’t mean I wasn’t going out altogether. She’s still gotta earn a living, and her living’s spilling tea. Luckily, along with the current wine bar burst, San Francisco’s having a tearoom explosion as well. (No, not that kind of tearoom, perverts. Leaves first, then you pay — not the other way around.) And the goddess of cups provides several venues for bar-hour tea-totaling glee. The slightly hoity-toity yet still chill Samovar Tea Lounge (www.samovartea.com) in the Castro is a bookish, cruisey mecca and just opened a Yerba Buena Gardens outpost to boot. Modern Tea (www.moderntea.com) has taken hold in Hayes Valley, with its stylish presentation and unequaled view of all the tipsy drag queens stumbling from Marlena’s down the street. Hang on to your saucers, ladies.

But the real news on the late-night tea front is the hip-hop-oriented Poleng Lounge. Yep, you read right, it’s a hip-hop tearoom. The kids from Massive Selector have transformed the former 1751 Social Club space into a Bali-inspired wonderland that also hosts performances by some of the top names in roots and electro (Ohmega Watts, Vikter Duplaix, Triple Threat). Poleng’s restaurant and tearoom opens to the public June 9, with a huge kickoff bash featuring Faust and Shortee, Amp Live, host Lateef, and probably more than a few chipped handles. Food and tipple are also available, but the focus, of course, is on the leaf — green and otherwise.

Whew! After all that tea I need to take a leak. But before I saunter off, look at me — I’m fantastic, I’m radiant, I’m slightly hypercaffeinated. I feel like I could do yoga in the street. Maybe I should do this personal time-out thing more often. As they say, the liver the better (just kidney!). Now somebody order me a damn mai tai already. SFBG

“LET THE RHYTHM HIT ’EM”

With Faust and Shortee and Amp Live

Fri/9, 9 p.m.–2 a.m.

Poleng Lounge

1751 Fulton, SF

(415) 441-1751

www.polenglounge.com

Tonight is what it means to be young

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TEEN FLICKS In the late ’70s and early ’80s a funny thing happened at the movies: Suddenly aware of a whole pocket-moneyed demographic betwixt Disney and the R rating, major studios began targeting a median audience, aged 15. (Ultimately they’d even get their very own designation, PG-13.) An explosion of post-Meatballs teen comedies soon replaced sex farce fucking and wanking with peeping and pranking. Even "nicer" films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the John Hughes–Molly Ringwald trilogy viewed adolescence as a self-contained world, not the way station to adulthood American Graffiti proposed just a few years earlier.

With the anthemic whining of Pink Floyd’s The Wall as personal soundtrack, kids who’d missed the big party of the ’60s grasped rebellion as attitude, sans social consciousness. Jonathan Kaplan’s Over the Edge (1979) and Adrian Lyne’s Foxes (1980) were fairly realistic portraits of aimless teenage escape from broken institutions (family, school). Exploring the same themes but leaving realism behind, the movies in Jesse Ficks’s Midnites for Maniacs’ "Latch-Key Kids Quadruple Feature" offer archetypal youth-persecution scenarios gone baroque via pop-fantasy tropes and bottomless (if depthless) directorial extravagance. To a generation just learning to want its MTV, albeit with a vengeance, such edgy glamour felt all the more "real" for being surreal.

Following his prior S.E. Hinton adaptation, The Outsiders, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 Rumble Fish replaced saturated-color swoon with a B&W faux-beatnik poesy derived equally from American International Pictures, Maya Deren, and Dal??. Its mannerisms are too indulgent to defend, too dazzling to deny — what other movie could stockpile so many desperate debtors to James Dean (Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper, Tom Waits, Nicolas Cage) and get away with it?

But Rumble Fish is acoustic haiku compared to the florid power balladry of director Walter Hill’s two most delirious action comix. Discarded by Paramount as an exploitation movie and belatedly acclaimed by critics, 1979’s gang warfare phantasmagoria The Warriors was so flagrantly exciting — Bic-waving 60-year-old Pauline Kael called it "visual rock" — that actual gang fights broke out in theaters, causing at least one death and much moral outrage. Its titular protagonists (derived, by way of a 1965 novel, from ancient Greek military history!) are scrappy underdogs fighting through rival gang turfs across a hallucinatory NYC. KISS Army–meets–Marvel Comics pillow hump? Blood-churning metaphor for life itself? Whatever: The Warriors remains trash-treasure gold.

Hill went even more nuts with "rock & roll fable" Streets of Fire, a neon-hued rainbow of ’50s juvenile delinquent nostalgia, new wave futurism, and pure 1983 mainstream cheese. Note the Pat Benatar postures struck by music superstar Ellen Aim (Diane Lane, in her bad "bad girl" period) before she’s abducted by freakazoid fan/rapist Willem Dafoe, necessitating rescue by laconic ex Michael Pare. "It’s so much better going nowhere fast," she wails in the quintessentially flamboyant opening set piece. Exactly! Streets of Fire is a stupid, gorgeous, guilty pleasure.

Simple guilt motivates the evening’s opening anomaly. Cipher in the Snow is a somber 21-minute lesson produced in 1973 by Brigham Young University in which a teenage boy exits a school bus to enigmatically expire in the wintry drifts. Why? As various authorities puzzle out later, nobody bothered to love him. Shown even in non-Mormon classrooms for several years, Cipher left a lasting impression on many because it explicitly amplified what many 15-year-olds think: No one cares about me, but if I just died, they’d be soooo sorry. (Dennis Harvey)

LATCH-KEY KIDS QUADRUPLE FEATURE

Cypher in the Snow, 7 p.m.; Rumble Fish, 7:45 p.m.; The Warriors, 9:45 p.m.; Streets of Fire, 11:59 p.m.

$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.midnitesformaniacs.com

Goode is great …

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Before his dancers had even taken a single step, a huge round of applause greeted Joe Goode at his group’s 20th-anniversary concert at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Goode is probably the best-loved choreographer in town. For two decades he has chronicled his generation’s unease about living in its own skin. When AIDS began to devastate this town in the early ’80s, Goode was there to speak out with pieces that were blunt, poignant, and theatrically savvy.

Goode is the poet of anxiety, pain, and uncertainty. He’s able to see a major catastrophe on its own terms but also as a metaphor for what ails us. His heroes — and they are heroes — are the outsiders, the watchers, and the misfits whose values and existence society would like to deny. He has a self-deprecatory wit that makes us wince and laugh at the same time. And he has developed a genre of dance theater that’s exceptionally successful at blending speech and movement. Very few choreographers have Goode’s ability to use language so acutely.

The anniversary concert offered the standing-room-only audience two pieces, the new Stay Together, to a score by San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, and the haunting 1998 Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood).

In Stay Together, Goode tackles what is glibly summarized as the midlife crisis: when long-term relationships unravel, careers begin to meander, and time ahead is shortening. A secondary strand explores the process of creating a piece, of finding a direction in which to take it. The ever-efficient Liz Burritt, clipboard in hand and glasses on her nose, was there to give the largely silent Goode plenty of advice of the “listen deeply” and “be in the moment” type.

The challenge here for Goode was to make a work about being clueless without coming up with a piece that goes nowhere. It’s a challenge he doesn’t quite meet. To achieve “a perfect little euphoria” is, no matter what Burritt says, no easier in art than it is in life. Despite good collaborators and several splendid episodes, there’s something wan about Stay Together that makes for a disconcerting theatrical experience.

Tilson Thomas’s score is perfectly serviceable, with monochromatic sections punctuated by percussive elements. Several times it hilariously called up sci-fi and Movietone music associations.

Goode and Melecio Estrella, as his maybe young lover, maybe younger self, had some telling shadowing duets together. During their first meeting, silhouetted against separate screens, heads longingly turning toward each other, they almost trembled with excitement and fragility. Throughout, Austin Forbord’s live videos contributed excellent tonal nuances and a sense of sometimes almost painful intimacy.

Stay Together‘s most theatrically cutting moment came with Marit Brook-Kothlow’s sex-starved Norma Desmond figure. The intensity of the character’s obsession split her screen image and spilled over into some vigorous dancing.

Deeply There remains one of Goode’s finest works. Robin Holcomb’s on-tape score, with its echoes of Shaker and Americana folk tunes, is inspired; the a cappella singing by Goode’s dancer-actors, haunting. With this quasi–musical theater work, Goode hones in on and pays tribute to a community that pulled together and learned to take care of and bury its own. Goode’s piece just barely avoids sentimentality by calling up equal measures of laughter and tears.

On many levels the piece remains disjointed. The outrageous Imelda figure (Ruben Graciani) and a voguing Jackie O sequence have little to do with the work’s subject except to point to the excesses of the times. These are the segments that today seem the most dated, perhaps because they look so innocent.

Yet the work rode an emotionally convincing trajectory from the opening prologue between Frank (Goode) and little Willis (Joshua Rauchwerger), who wants to know where Goode’s lover Ben is, to the last monologue about carrying on, however uncertainly. The scenes seamlessly flowed one to the next; the characters looked all too plausible. Estrella as the well-meaning goody-goody neighbor was positively nauseating, while Brook-Kothlow has grown in stature as D.D. the dog and Felipe Barrueto Cabello’s silent Mauricio has more backbone. The only false note remains Joyce (Burritt), Ben’s virago of a sister. She is still too much of a caricature. SFBG

joe goode performance group

Fri/9–Sat/10, 8 p.m.; Sun/11, 7 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater

700 Howard, SF

$16–$40

(415) 978-2787,

Beast of the Bay

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Woe to you, Oh Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the Beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short…. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty six.

— Revelation 13:18

This week marks an unusual holiday — or unholy day — that only comes along once every 100 years: the Day of the Beast, 6/6/06. For some it is a day to fear, when the Antichrist of Christian mythology will finally be revealed. For others it is a time of hope and celebration for precisely the same reason. For me, it is a time to rock. The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden’s third studio album, was released in 1982. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson had just joined the band, and Maiden was at the height of its powers. My best friend Mike and I listened to the entire record every day after school for months. We would sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the record cover, trying to decipher its hidden meanings and getting off on the comic book/metal imagery. As true fans and converts, we felt compelled to spread the word, or at least show how cool we thought we were.

So one morning before school, we took a black Magic Marker to a couple of white T-shirts, writing three big 6s on the fronts and “The Number of the Beast” on the backs. We were so proud of ourselves walking to school, but our bubble was burst as soon as we got there: The teacher sent us straight back home to change, telling us, “Some of the other children might find it offensive.” Mike and I both played it off like we were innocent little rock fans, with no intentions of offending or converting anyone to Satanism. We were just celebrating our favorite band — and song.

The title song in question is, to my mind, one of the most rocking ever recorded. Maiden bassist Steve Harris wrote it, and it is a true metal classic: heavy riffs, strong, catchy hooks, and vaguely sinister metal lyrics. The words put the listener straight into the narrator’s mind, witnessing the dawn of Hell on Earth: “Torches blazed and sacred chants were praised/ As they start to cry, hands held to the sky/ In the night, the fires burning bright/ The ritual has begun, Satan’s work is done.”

Dickinson invokes dark, paranoid imagery as if channeling Poe or Lovecraft, and when he spits out the chorus of “6-6-6/ The Number of the Beast,” he conjures up all that is implied in the evil numerology: the tension between the narrator’s juvenile fascination with evil — much like our own — and the higher impulse to overcome and reject it.

“But I feel drawn to the chanting hordes / They seem to mesmerize, can’t avoid their eyes.”

In the end, the narrator appears to be swayed, or possessed, by the dark forces, and joins them. But don’t worry, for we are shown the way to salvation by the album’s cover art: Amid a field of flames and an ominous night sky, a small man, representing humanity, dances on puppet strings held by a horned, red devil, who is himself attached to strings wielded by Eddie, Maiden’s ubiquitous undead mascot. The message is clear: While humankind may be weak and easily led astray by the Hoofed One, it is the power of rock — or more specifically, metal, as represented by Eddie — that can save us and help us to conquer our fears. The words of the song tell one story, but the sheer visceral power of the music itself transforms and redeems the lyrical narrative. Evil may exist — in ourselves, on Earth, and in the universe — but by the empowering grace of metal, we can exorcise our demons and tame the beast within. Metal becomes the negation of the negation.

Theologically, of course, before the devil became the grotesque and irredeemable character of novels and horror movies, he was the Adversary, the Fallen Angel, the Forsaken One of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Remember his friendly wager with God over Job’s soul, or his cordial philosophical debates with the Nazarene, long before Faust’s wager or Linda Blair’s projectile vomiting. It was he who questioned and encouraged others to do the same, the one who opposed and dared to think for himself. He was the rebel, the gadfly, the thorn in the side. The subsequent notion that questioning authority and tradition is the devil’s work, though intended to scare us straight, gives rise to a certain curiosity — and yes, sympathy — toward Lucifer, in some who cherish freedom of thought and expression. No doubt some of the titillation we feel watching Rosemary’s Baby or listening to the “The Number of the Beast” comes from such an impulse to defy a hallowed authority, from the safety of our imaginations.

Twenty-four years after it was released, the Iron Maiden album retains its power and vitality. It continues to be a benchmark for good, honest heavy metal now obscured by retro-fixated irony, emo-inspired whininess, embarrassing misappropriations of hip-hop, and false metal generally. The fact that Maiden has stuck to its guns through the waxing and waning of true metal’s popularity and has continued to record and tour on its own terms to this day somehow adds to the record’s staying power. The music is not tainted by revisionist questions about the band’s motives or integrity. In this, as well as the music, Maiden continues to be an inspiration to generations of musicians and fans.

I like to think of “The Number of the Beast” as a kind of “White Christmas” for the day of the beast. (Too bad it’s a holiday that only happens once a century — it could mean a gold mine in royalties for Harris and co.) Never mind that the nice chaps in Maiden are not actually Satanists at all — Irving Berlin was Jewish, and we all know you don’t have to be a Christian to have a tree. It’s the spirit of the day that counts. So on 6/6/06, do yourself a favor and crank up some Maiden. If you listen carefully, you might almost hear the children’s voices caroling:

“666 — The number of the beast/ 666 — The one for you and me.” SFBG

Devin Hoff lives in Oakland and plays the bass with Redressers, Good for Cows, Nels Cline Singers, and others.

Shoot for the contents

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Who is going to tell our stories if we don’t?" asks Madeleine Lim, founder and director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. She has a point. After wracking my brain to recall queer women or trans people of color who have graced a movie screen this year outside of a film festival, all I could come up with was Alice Wu’s Saving Face — which certainly didn’t play at the multiplex. Lim firmly believes that "as long as we’re not in the studio systems writing, directing, and producing these films, we’re never going to see ourselves on the big screen." Her "little stab" at putting such stories front and center was creating the QWOCMAP program, which offers free digital filmmaking workshops to queer women and trans folks of color.

This weekend brings the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, an official event of the National Queer Arts Festival that Lim organizes and curates along with M??nica Enr??quez and Darshan Elena Campos. "Tender Justice," the first evening’s program (Thurs/8, 7 p.m.), showcases shorts by young women aged 18 to 25. Many deal with issues of violence and assault, some obliquely: In the experimental piece Messages, by Alyssa Contreras, a girl wanders through a surreal red-and-black nightmare listening to hateful cell phone messages left by various family members.

On the second evening, queer Latina filmmakers come together for "En Mi Piel: Borders Redrawn" (Fri/9, 7 p.m.). The event, which includes a panel discussion, is entirely bilingual: "It is political to reclaim spaces that are bilingual, in light of the immigration debate and the backlash and racism that it has generated," says cocurator Enr??quez. There are shorts by Bay Area and Los Angeles filmmakers, as well as a group of Mexican filmmakers who traveled here on a grant from the Global Fund for Women. One highlight is filmmaking collective Mujeres y Cultura Subterranea’s La Dimensi??n del Olvido, a gritty documentary that chronicles the lives of women and startlingly young girls who live on the streets in Mexico. Others include Liliana Hueso’s Las Mujeres de Mi Vida; Aurora Guerrero’s Pura Lengua, which skillfully handles a narrative about a Los Angeles Latina queer woman who deals with a horrific police assault; and Amy André’s En Mi Piel, in which an FTM half-white, half-Chicano trans man named Logan recalls his journey back to Mexico, the search for his roots becoming part of his new identity.

The third evening, "Heart of the Flame" (Sat/10, 7 p.m.), features works by students of Lim’s over the age of 25. One such is Kenya Brigg’s Forgiven, an autobiographical narrative about recognizing her grandmother’s strength of forgiveness, which she observes when the elderly African American woman uses a cake to bury the hatchet with a white neighbor who once signed a petition to keep her from buying a house in their Castro neighborhood. SFBG

QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR
FILM FESTIVAL

Thurs/8–Sat/10

SF LBGT Community Center,
Rainbow Room

1800 Market, SF

(415) 752-0868

Free

www.qwocmap.org

Light after darkness

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Cracked walls, peeling plaster, empty light sockets, patterns of wallpaper, and scraps of old headlines — devoid of human activity, the shots within poet, novelist, critic, painter, and occasional filmmaker Weldon Kees’s only solo directorial effort, Hotel Apex (1952), convey what biographer James Reidel deemed a fascination with “the pathos of objects.” It’s little wonder Jenni Olson feels a certain kinship with Kees: Her recent ode to San Francisco loneliness, 2005’s The Joy of Life, also mines emotion from urban spaces some might consider empty or left behind. “He’s very quirky about the banal and the mundane, and kind of poetic and melancholy,” notes Olson, when asked about a bond. “He’s a role model.”

Because The Joy of Life‘s soundtrack features Kees’s “The Coastline Rag,” Olson’s exploration of landscape and longing might seem like a direct tribute to Kees’s film work — after all, Olson’s film deals partly with the Golden Gate Bridge and suicide, and Kees was fatally drawn to the landmark. That isn’t the case, though: It turns out Olson only recently learned of Hotel Apex‘s existence, in the process of putting together a film program devoted to Kees, with some help from Reidel.

Such a project couldn’t have been simple. A too-easy source like IMDb.com is definitely not the place to go to learn about Kees’s links with film, as the site only credits his contributions as a composer to The Joy of Life and James Broughton’s Adventures of Jimmy, an oft-hilarious short with ultra-fey narration by Broughton that resonates with the real-life sexual ambiguity of both its director and (perhaps a bit less) its music contributor.

In fact, Kees was involved in more than a handful of short films. Unsettling when one digs beneath its ordinary surface, the Gregory Bateson collaboration Hand-Mouth Coordination (1952) resembles a home movie of a mom and child that includes footage of the father figure — who actually turns out to be Kees — at work behind a Bolex. If the scenario seems a bit like the filmed experiments that distort the protagonist of Michael Powell’s 1960 Peeping Tom as a child, the comparison isn’t completely off base. “The film is meant to be a depiction of a schizopregenic — a cold mother who doesn’t properly bond with her kid,” Olson explains while describing one of a few projects partly derived from Kees’s links to the local Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic. “Kees was very particular about the idea that the filmmaker should be visible, in a way that — 50 years ago — was new. He was influenced by Helen Levitt.”

An acknowledgement, however unconventional, of the filmmaker’s role — something troublesomely absent from Eric Steel’s controversial, not-yet-released Golden Gate Bridge suicide documentary The Bridge — is something that unites Kees’s and Olson’s movie projects. Kees’s physical presence within a 1955 film by William Heick, also called The Bridge, is the more subtle and historically engaged riddle about life, death, and the Golden Gate Bridge at the core of Olson’s program, which she’s put together in conjunction with San Francisco Cinematheque and the Poetry Center. In The Bridge, Heick and Kees draw upon Hart Crane’s poem of the same name: Although the structure itself is no longer the Brooklyn but rather the Golden Gate span, Crane’s words become an elegy not just for himself but for fellow poet Kees as well.

Beyond the films he was involved in, Kees’s ties to film history are rich ones. Briefly a movie critic at Time, he was close to James Agee, and as Reidel’s bio notes in passing, no less a talent than friend and fellow painter-critic Manny Farber praised Hotel Apex‘s unorthodox camera work for its “crawl” down a steam pipe “at the pace of a half-dead bug.” (Kees also rubbed shoulders and butted heads with Clement Greenberg, Mary McCarthy, Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams, and others.) Pauline Kael often cursed herself for not recognizing self-destructive signs in her friend, as she was one of the last people to see Kees with any regularity in the last year of his life. For those who know little about Kees’s ties with Kael, or the role moviegoing plays in one of his most effective and contemporary poems, Olson’s program might bring a surprise or two. SFBG

KEES KINO: THE FILM WORK OF WELDON KEES

Sun/11, 7:30 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.sfcinematheque.org

www.butch.org

Gnaw on this

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

There’s always room for another film festival in this town, especially when said fest is drowning in blood, guts, and supernatural shenanigans. The San Francisco Independent Film Festival’s festering youngest child, Another Hole in the Head, returns this week for its third year of ghouls gone wild.

Standouts include The Hamiltons (think Party of Five meets Martin), directed by a local duo whose enticing nom de screen is "the Butcher Brothers,” and, from Greece, Yorgos Noussias’s excellent To Kako (Evil), which cribs from Romero and 28 Days Later in its tale of a ragtag band of urban survivors scrambling to evade the marauding undead. And yes, it does incorporate the dreaded fast-moving breed of zombies, but even genre purists turned off by that factoid will forgive the film once things start going apeshit; I’m thinking in particular of a scene in a deserted restaurant that unleashes 2006’s most satisfying head-squashing to date. The film also has enough of a sense of humor to include the line "If you don’t trust me, trust this!" (cut to: a giant rifle) and a last shot of near-genius proportions.

Per usual, HoleHead brings in several Asian horror flicks, including Shinya Tsukamoto’s enduringly creepy Haze and Yudai Yamaguchi (Battlefield Baseball) and Junichi Yamamoto’s disappointing Meatball Machine. There are also a handful of classics, like Bruce Kessler’s 1971 psych-out Simon: King of the Witches and — in perhaps the festival’s most inspired move — John Boorman’s 1973 Zardoz. Sean Connery’s spectacular loincloth is but the first of many, many reasons to view this neglected masterpiece on the big screen.

Also well worth catching (either at the fest or during their June 29–July 2 run at CELLspace): splat-happy theater troupe the Primitive Screwheads (Evil Dead: Live!, Re-Animator of the Dead), who return with their latest, The Chainsaw Massacres, which boasts a rumored 60 gallons of stage blood poised to rain down on the audience. Plus: disco!

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

June 8–15

See Film listings for venue and ticket information

www.sfindie.com

Mini mini CinemaScope!

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The term CinemaScope might conjure a 2.66-to-1 vision of an extra-bodacious Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, or, if you’re a certain breed of movie maniac, it might inspire a recitation of Fritz Lang’s famous Contempt-uous remark that the format is fine for filming snakes and coffins, but not for capturing people. Bizarre, then, that Liu Jiayin has taken an outmoded approach known for gargantuan celluloid spectacle and revived it — brilliantly — for small-scale digital family portraiture. Winner of numerous festival prizes, including the competitive Dragons and Tigers award bestowed in Vancouver last fall, Liu’s BetaSP debut feature, Ox Hide, has more than once been deemed the most important first feature to emerge from China since Jia Zhangke’s 2000 Platform. That’s a fest obsessive’s way of saying that Liu is the real deal — in addition to possessing a charismatically baby-butch camera presence, she knows how to write, stage, and shoot a funny, unsettling, and pointed scene.

Twenty-three scenes, to be exact, a number reflecting Liu’s age when she made the movie. Ox Hide consists of just that many immobile but rarely "static" shots, each used to depict a moment from the cramped and quarrelsome domestic life she shares with her mother and her father, the latter a stubborn and slowly failing leather goods merchant. (Thus the title.) Making "reality" TV look about as stupid as it is, Liu shares a unique use of format and a sharp focus on the family with ’90s teen PixelVision pioneer — and former Le Tigre member — Sadie Benning, and like Benning, she’s got terrific timing both on-screen (bickering about noodles at the dinner table) and off (using a close-up of a printer to reveal her kin’s economic struggles). Local curator Joel Shepard deserves thanks for bringing this movie to the Bay Area, kicking off a "Beijing Underground" series that will span a few more Fridays this month. (Johnny Ray Huston)

OX HIDE

Thurs/8, 7 and 9 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

$5–$8

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Honeycomb hideout

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Cast a spell — that is what movies (at least nondocumentary ones) are or were supposed to do, and yet how often do they achieve that aim today? V??ctor Erice’s original feature, 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive, is partly about the spell a masterful movie can cast, and also is a many-shaded masterpiece that casts an unforgettable spell, a waking dream that disperses in a way that seems to infect the world outside the darkened rooms in which it breathes and lives.

At first glance the story seems so simple, and after all, it is set "Once upon a time …," as an intertitle announces, just after a credit sequence featuring objects relevant to the story — a beekeeper’s mask, a train, a well, a mushroom, and that surrealist standby, a clock — drawn by the film’s lead actors. But more specifically, it takes place somewhere on the Castilian plateau of Spain around 1940, as Frankenstein comes to town. Ana (Ana Torrent) and older sister Isabel (Isabel Teller??a) are among the children who race through the barren rural landscape to a movie barn to see James Whale’s classic chiller, but it is only Ana who cranes like a lunar flower under the projected light, ignoring a prelude from the film’s producers that warns viewers not to take what they see too seriously. Before Ana and her sister emerge playfully shrieking from the darkened building, Erice has already allowed Frankenstein‘s influence to seep outside, into the seemingly oblivious existences of the girls’ mutually alienated parents, a beekeeper (Fernando Fern?

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